Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

This is just wrong, this getting up at 3.30AM. No way is this enough sleep…to go anywhere on, let alone PDX airport and then another airport and onto yet another airport somewhere, someplace halfway down the globe. But then I have invited it upon myself as for a few years I have angled for a trip to Quito, especially if it falls during the school year! Delta’s middle seats are no better than awful, especially when the people sitting either side of you ooze both over and under the seat arms and into your already meager space. It really is too bad that at the very last second an alert ticket agent (who, doing the math at five in the morning finds me five months shy of being age enough to take my assigned seat in the exit row…despite my being near six feet tall and far more athletic than the portly sloth now assigned to it). Portland recedes and Atlanta approaches and then comes Quito but only after being treated to a beautiful sunset as we transect the Florida Keys above Islamorada (more…)

The scream of turbofan jets seems omnipresent in this city high in the Andes, whose ranges and valleys are interrupted by the snow clad volcanoes, Cayembe, Pichincha and Cotopaxi amongst others. Morning, noon, and night huge aircraft thread the eye of a needle that is the narrow valley, with its densely house-clad slopes making up the environs of this city astride the equator. As passengers come into the recently updated (and vastly improved) airport, the boxes of roses depart in even greater numbers. Some go out on the scheduled airlines beneath the feet of tourists returning from the Galapagos while others fill the freighters’ holds, destined to satiate global demand (more…)